Are fish mostly captive bred?

[sylvia]

But aquarium life isn't always fishy heaven...

 

[Angry_Platy]

But aquarium life isn't always fishy heaven...

It is in my tanks

Or so my fish tell me anyway

 

[sylvia]

That's good to hear I wasn't reffering to anyone in particular

 

[jflowers]

Its not fishy heaven when 8 danios are kept in a 5 gal or a single silver shark is kept in a 2' tank. I would think fishy heaven starts when 8 danios are kept in an 8' tank with nothing else but plants, bet they would love that. But then our temptation steps in and we think 'hmmm 1" per gallon' there I think fishy heaven ends. Also not picking on peeps, my own tanks are fully stocked to our levels not the fishies.

Jon

 

[Inchworm]

It is in the interst of the hobby to captive breed fish PROPERLY. A captive bred fish will be cheaper than a wild caught fish. Cheaper fish sell more.

This is not necessarily true.

My tank raised corys bring a nice price when I sell them to the lfs. From what I can tell he pays more for them than he would pay for them from his distributor. Of course, they are healthy-- disease and parasite free. They are also raised in local water which makes it easy to transfer them to him and from his store to the customer's tanks. He has no loss with them and they make his customers happy.

On the other hand, I had the opportunity to buy some wild caught bronze corys, which is unusual these days, and am impressed with the difference between them and my tank raised ones. After many generations of being tank raised they seem to have lost some of their subtle color and also some size and agility, IMHO.

You might find this old thread interesting. It discusses some of the steps and costs involved in the process of bring wild caught fish to the lfs.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=22068&hl=

 

[sylvia]

True. I just wanted to comment on the bronze cory thing... I have captive bred fish and mine show incredible color though compared to pictures I have seen and those at my LFS I can see what you are talking about as those are rather dull. Mine are black with contrasting orangey-brown and pure wivory-white with irridescent green-blue and I have to say that I think they are absolutely beautiful. I'll try to post some pics but I don't have a digital camera or scanner so I'll have to borrow one at some point

 

[guppymonkey]

Anyone who thinks that the majority of fish are captive bred is kidding themselves, the majority of fish are still taken from the wild and the only ones that are captive bred are the very common community type fish and most Cichlids and livebearers.
Almost all Corydoras with the exception of bronze and peppered are wild caught as are L number plecs, none of the Pimeloid species (pim pictus, shovelnoses etc) have been captive bred as well as most other catfish species, Cardinal tetras are still all taken from the wild from managed sections of river and almost all oddball and predatory species will be wild caught, it would be far easier to list the fish that are not wild caught than it would be to list the ones that are.

But the vast majority of aquariums contain fish that are captive bred community fish. With the exception of some of the fish you mentioned (pictus cats for example) most fish are the small easily bred community fish. One of the reasons for this is that they are cheap because they breed so easily. It is not the "average" consumer that is buying the more rare harder to breed wild caught fish usually. I am not saying that they don't buy wild caught fish but its not as usual because these fish are usually more expensive. Think about how many billion guppies or platies there must be in the world! I am guessing that they alone outnumber all the wild caught fish taken each year!

There is the consideration that the aquarium fish trade is actually conserving nature as well. The people catching these fish for a living have to be conserned about preserving the environment and keeping it pollution-free, or otherwise the lose their means to make a living. I don't know how much effect this has in reality overall, but I do know it is a factor in some parts of the world.

This is not true most of the time. Most of these people don't really care about the environment. They have no interest in fish besides the money that they make. Many of the people that net the wild fish are just locals looking for a few bucks. The locals in many tropical countries are poorly educated and do not know how to conserve their resources. There are some areas that properly conserve their natural resources but the vast majority don't care. Its the same as oil companies, they don't care about the future just about the money they can make NOW.